Carrie Fisher biography

Carrie Fisher was born in Burbank, California to showbiz parents Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. When Fisher was two years old, her parents divorced and her father married Elizabeth Taylor. Her mother remarried the following year. Fisher attended the Beverly Hills High School before leaving to follow in her mother's footsteps. They both appeared in a Broadway production of Irene in 1973. Fisher later attended the Central School of Speech and Drama at London University, before making her film debut in Shampoo (1975), which had Warren Beatty as star and co-writer.

Just two years later she played Princess Leia in Star Wars (1977), the role for which she is still most famous. She appeared as Princess Leia in the 1978 TV movie The Star Wars Holiday Special, and hosted Saturday Night Live in the same year, wearing the character's trademark gold bikini.

Fisher is also an accomplished writer, having written four best-selling novels. The first, Postcards from the Edge, landed her the Los Angeles Pen Award for Best New Novel and was made into a 1990 film. Her writing has also been published in magazines such as Details, Harpers Bazaar, New York Times, Travel & Leisure, and Vogue. She updates a blog regularly on her personal website. Fisher has suffered addiction and bipolar disorder and has spoken out about them both. More recently, she reunited with other original Star Wars stars, Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill, to reprise their roles in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015). She has also completed work on Star Wars: Episode VIII (2017).

Carrie married Paul Simon in 1983 but it was short-lived and ended in divorce in 1984. She says he would sing her to sleep, "which was incredibly sweet or slightly annoyingdepending on the album." She has a daughter, Billie (b. 1992) from a relationship with Bryan Lourd.

During a flight home from London on December 23, 2016, Carrie suffered a major heart attack. She was rushed to UCLA Medical Center, but died four days later on December 27, 2016.